One of the biggest sore spots in Taiwan’s historical friendship with the US came in 1979 when US president Jimmy Carter broke off formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan’s Republic of China (ROC) government so that the US could establish relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Taiwan’s derecognition came purely at China’s insistence, and the US took the deal.
Retired American diplomat John Tkacik, who for almost decade surrounding that schism, from 1974 to 1982, worked in embassies in Taipei and Beijing and at the Taiwan Desk in Washington DC, recently argued in the Taipei Times that “President Carter’s derecognition of the ROC… can now be seen in a far more positive light” because Carter “preserved the full substance of America’s relations with Taiwan” (“John J. Tkacik, Jr. On Taiwan: Reassessing Jimmy Carter’s Derecognition of Taipei,” Oct. 21, 2024, page 8).
According to Tkacik, Carter not only ensured the future of the US-Taiwan security and economic relationships, including America’s right to continue selling defensive weapons to Taiwan, he more importantly got China’s leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) to sign off on it. The US embassy might have had to change its name to the American Institute in Taipei (AIT), but the media simply adjusted its terminology to call it the “de facto embassy.” Though Taiwan had been downgraded, many of the important things stayed the same.
Not all share this forgiving view, and a new book, Derecognition, portrays the Carter administration as on the verge of casting Taiwan into a diplomatic wasteland, a process stopped by Taiwan’s friends in the US Congress and intense lobbying efforts, including those of Taiwan’s international business community. The book’s author, Robert Parker, is the man who took up the presidency of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei (AmCham) the very day that derecognition went into effect on Jan. 1, 1979.
TAIWAN’S SON -IN-LAW
Parker was a Washington DC lawyer, who, anticipating Taiwan’s economic boom, arrived in Taipei in 1976 and set up the ROC’s first foreign-run law firm. Two years later, he was elected AmCham president at age 36.
Carter announced the US would sever ties on Dec. 15, 1978, and from the following afternoon, Parker, with AmCham’s weight behind him, became a forceful and vocal advocate for Taiwan’s cause at a time when it badly needed international friends. The Taiwanese gave him nicknames like “the underground ambassador” and “Taiwan’s son-in-law.”
At the same time, Parker also began lobbying Taiwan’s ROC government to save US military institutions that had become the cornerstones of Taipei’s expatriate life. These included the Taipei American School, the American Club, a program for sports leagues called the Taipei Youth Program Association (TYPA) and the US military radio station, Armed Forces Network Taiwan, which was converted into International Community Radio Taipei (ICRT). All are still going strong in Taiwan today.
Parker describes the Carter administration as harboring a general “hostility” towards Taiwan, especially then-vice president Walter Mondale and the official dealing most directly with Taiwan’s government at the time, then-assistant secretary of state for East Asia, Richard Holbrooke.
“Holbrooke and others in the Carter administration seemed to assume that Taiwan would collapse and be taken over by its communist adversary following American withdrawal, as had happened with South Vietnam four years earlier,” Parker writes.
But the attitude was also part of a new mood then sweeping the US State Department.
THE PARKER MEMORANDUM
Following derecognition, Taiwan’s diplomats were not allowed to enter US government buildings. Taiwan’s new de facto embassy in Washington DC could neither fly the ROC flag nor use “Taiwan” in its name — the mission was and still is called the Taipei Cultural and Economic Office. The chafes were numerous.
Carter did recognize that continuing relations with Taiwan would require new legislation, but his proposed “omnibus bill” was met with immediate derision. Future US president Joe Biden, then a senator and Taiwan advocate, described it as “woefully inadequate.” When Parker was called to testify before Congress in Feb 1979, his intention was to “denigrate the bill.”
In a brief that became known in the US Congress as “the Parker Memorandum,” the young lawyer charged that Carter’s omnibus bill had no defense provisions, which threatened the stability of 500 US businesses already in Taiwan. Just as significant, the bill did not recognize any sort of government in Taiwan, which would have terminated more than 50 treaties and thrown business relations into a legal no man’s land. He further argued that defense provisions should include “embargoes and boycotts.”
These were not just theoretical concerns. Within months of derecognition, both Pan-Am airlines and the First National Bank of Chicago shut down their Taiwan operations so they could start doing business in China, events Parker cites as evidence of Chinese boycotts. Then, at a ceremony in Beijing where the US cancelled an aviation treaty with Taiwan at China’s bidding, Parker entered into a “heated argument” with Holbrooke.
Several of Parker’s counter proposals against the omnibus bill most crucially including recognition of a government on Taiwan — were incorporated in a new piece of legislation, the Taiwan Relations Act. Drafted by influential senators including Biden, Jesse Helms and Jacob Javits, it passed Congress on April 10, 1979 by an overwhelming and veto-proof majority. It has stood as the key legal document guaranteeing US obligations to Taiwan’s security ever since.
Parker’s lobbying in Washington DC also gave him access to the upper echelons of the ROC government, including cabinet ministers and intimates of president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), connections he used to preserve Taipei’s expat institutions.
PRESERVATION
Saving the Taipei American School was the most difficult. For more than four years, the Ministry of Education insisted on taking over the school, refusing to allow the existence of a private school that set an independent curriculum. It was only when former finance minister Li Kwoh-ting (李國鼎) proposed that the school register as non-profit in the US and operate as a contractor to AIT that the impasse was resolved.
Holding onto the US military radio station, Armed Forces Network Taiwan, turned out to be easier, though only owing to unanticipated support from the very top — from president Chiang himself. Chiang knew that derecognition came as an existential shock to many Taiwanese and saw the radio station as “a symbol of continuity in Taiwan’s indispensable relationship with America.” According to Parker, Chiang ordered, “there will not be a single minute of silence.”
So at midnight on April 15, 1979, when Parker spoke the first words on the air on the newly inaugurated station, ICRT — at 100.7FM, it is still one of the most popular stations in Taiwan today — Chiang was listening.
ICRT’s launch came just five days after the Taiwan Relations Act passed into law in the US Congress and five months after Carter’s world-shaking announcement. Thanks in part to Parker, Taiwan had won a partial reprieve.
Parker divulges that this new book was only produced after much urging from his peers. It will not be the final word on derecognition — Tkacik’s analysis is well worth reading — but it is an indispensable record of events. If the author has one shortcoming, it is that he is no novelist. Derecognition often reads like a legal brief. Its information, not its prose, is what makes it invaluable.
The book also includes an introduction by Taiwan’s doyen of foreign journalists, Don Shapiro, who helped edit the text. At present, it is only available in a paperback edition via major online retailers.
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